Kampung Kreepy

I love folklore, and I’ve always been fascinated by folk horror. It’s a subgenre of horror that uses folklore, folk beliefs, urban legends and/or paganism to evoke fear and dread. The stories are usually set in rural or isolated areas, and themes include the clash between the old and the modern, and man versus nature.  In terms of fiction, Thomas Tryon’s 1973 novel Harvest Home is a classic. Other examples include Stephen King’s short story “Children of the Corn,” and his novel Pet Sematary . More recent gems are Adam Nevill’s The Ritual , and Andrew Michael Hurley’s Starve Acre .    As to movies, The Wicker Man springs immediately to mind. In the 1973 film (there is a 2006 remake but I prefer the creepier original), a police officer travels to the remote Scottish island of Summerisle to find a missing girl. He discovers, to his mounting horror, that the island residents practice a particular form of Celtic paganism.  More recent folk horror movies include Midsomm...

Five stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I enjoyed reading this, which I picked up because I’m curious about folk horror. The anthology is a nice mix of the old and new. The stories include those written by the old horror masters such as M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft and Algernon Blackwood. It also features more modern writers such as Ramsey Campbell and Dennis Etchison.   It’s a good introduction to folk horror. I highly recommend this book if you are looking for something in this horror subgenre. My favorite stories in the anthology are “The Gypsies in the Wood,” “Porson’s Piece,” and “Ancient Lights.”